


Through My Most Grievous Fault

by Dori



Category: Buffy
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-31
Updated: 2006-01-31
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:39:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dori/pseuds/Dori
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy's dead.  Spike blames himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through My Most Grievous Fault

**Author's Note:**

> Set between S5 and S6

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

He slipped another bead through ruined fingers, and began again. "Hail Mary, full of grace..."

He'd learned the words from Dru, back in the old days when Angelus used them to punish her, making her tell the beads until she wept and bled and finally passed out from the pain.

The words were thick in his mouth, painful on his swollen, blistered tongue; he coughed, then spat blood. When his throat was clear, he resumed the prayer, his voice accompanied by the soft splash of the blood that dripped from his hands onto the stone floor of his crypt.

The individual burns of the beads had blended into one long, slow burn as he told the decades, until his fingers blistered and split and bled, but he deserved it. He deserved far worse. He had failed her.

She was dead because she'd trusted him.

"Buffy..." For a moment he let the weight of his grief and guilt press him to the cold floor; then he struggled back to his knees and picked up the beads.

"Hail Mary..."


End file.
